


Bedside Manner

by glorious_spoon



Series: Tumblr/Twitter Prompt Fic [21]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-28 23:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16732989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: "I told you I was dying," Peter mumbles into her shoulder.





	Bedside Manner

**Author's Note:**

> For a tumblr prompt by rubynye, who asked for Gamora's Field Medic skills as experienced by Peter.

“Hold still,” Gamora says, pinning him effortlessly with one hand when he tries to flinch away from the needle. Her voice is mostly stern, but there’s an undercurrent of brittle fear there that’s somewhat less than encouraging, considering their situation.

“You do–ow! Jesus!”

“I told you to hold still!”

“I am holding still!” Peter yelps. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“Yes,” Gamora says shortly, pulling the needle through the torn edges of his muscle and tugging the knot tight. It’s a sickening sensation that Peter has never gotten used to, despite having wound up on the receiving end of this kind of rough and ready field medicine more times than he can count. At least Yondu usually had an analgesic pad or two handy to slap on Peter before he stitched him up.

They have plenty of those back at the infirmary on the Quadrant, but it’s not like they can get to them now. Hopefully, Rocket will fix the life-signs detectors in time to find them before they get hunted down and strung up over a fire-pit by what passes for settlers on this shithole rock.

Cannibals. Fucking figures. That’s the exact kind of cosmic joke that the universe loves to play on him. At least they don’t seem that interested in Gamora, although whether that’s her species or her augmentation, he doesn’t know.

Speaking of. He narrows his eyes at her, as much as he can with blood caked in his eyelashes and obscuring his vision. She already stitched up the flap of skin where they tried to scalp him, but it still hurts like a sonofabitch, and he’s pretty sure it’s going to scar in a way that will seriously endanger his rakish good looks. “Have you ever done this to anyone who didn’t have body mods?”

Gamora doesn’t respond as she starts another stitch, but the silence has taken on a distinctly squirrelly edge.

Peter closes his eyes, rolls his cheek against the cave floor. It’s dark and reeking in here, which probably means that they’ve hidden out in the lair of some large carnivore that will be happy to have them both for dinner if the cannibals don’t get there first. It really kind of pisses him off, how many things in this galaxy want to eat him, and not even in the fun way.

His head is spinning, his body cold/hot/cold in a way that definitely doesn’t bode well for his continued well-being. “I’m gonna die.”

“You’re not going to die,” Gamora says. The hand that’s holding down his mangled thigh lifts briefly to slap at his face, none too gently. “Don’t go to sleep.”

“Come on, could you just let me pass out here? I’m pretty sure this would be a lot more comfortable if I was unconscious.”

“No,” Gamora retorts, leaning back over the injury. Peter has been deliberately not looking at it since she dragged him in here, but he’s pretty sure that the muscle is shredded to a degree that’s going to require a real planetside hospital when they get out of here.

 _If_  they get out of here.

His eyes are sliding shut. She slaps his cheek again, harder. “Ow!”

“Don’t. Go. To. Sleep.” She punctuates each word with a tug on the fishing line she’s using to make sutures. “You don’t have reserves of nanites. You’ve lost too much blood, and your body can’t produce more.”

“So– _ow!_  Jesus fuck! What the hell is slapping me supposed to do?”

“I’m keeping you awake. Rocket will find us soon.”

“Keeping me awake isn’t going to magically give me more red blood cells.” He’s pretty sure even her idea of a gentle love-tap isn’t going to keep him awake much longer. The world seems to be made out of of blurry shapes and faded colors, and he’s way too cold, except for the sharp-burning pain of his wounds. At least they’re not still leaking blood, but he’s pretty sure it’s already too late unless Rocket finds them in the next fifteen minutes or so. Which isn’t likely.

He’s probably going to die here, if they’re being realistic. Gamora, a bloody-minded realist down to the core if he’s ever met one, has to know that.

So, yeah, in light of that the slapping probably makes sense. He fumbles, reaching for the nearest part of her that he can put his hand on, which turns out to be her hip. “Hey.”

“Almost done.”

“Kay,” he says. “Hey. Gamora. I think I’m dying. Seriously.”

“You should stop talking.” She turns to pack their kit back up, her slender fingers skating over her blaster, head turned toward the entrance of the cave.

“You hear ‘em?”

“No,” Gamora says. Her fingers curl around his like she’s about to peel his hand away, but in the end she just holds on. The warmth of her skin bleeds through the back of his knuckles. “We lost them. We’ll be safe here until Rocket finds us.”

She will, anyway. That’s good. He rolls his head against the stone, then stops when his stomach threatens to rebel. Everything seems distant and strange in a really fucking unpleasant kind of way. “Okay,” he says again, and the syllables come out kind of sideways and slurry.

“Peter,” she says. She slaps his face again, and then both of her hands are cupped around his jaw, impossibly strong, impossibly warm, fingers pressing hard enough to find the shape of his bones. That should probably hurt, but it doesn’t. “ _Peter!_ Wake up!”

“Sorry,” Peter mumbles, and everything slips away into darkness.

* * *

He wakes to bright lights and the sound of energy weapons, something scorched and burnt in his nostrils. He gasps, his head jerking forward as his lungs try to clear themselves, and his teary vision clears to see Gamora leaning toward him, green skin pale, jaw set.

“Get up,” she snaps. He wants to tell her that he can’t, but her arm is already under his shoulders, hauling him bodily upright. He’s got a good six inches and at least seventy pounds on her, but she lifts him like he weighs nothing. “I told you not to go to sleep.”

“I told you I was dying,” he mumbles into her shoulder. His feet bump over a rock, but that doesn’t seem to matter; it’s not like he’s actually in control of where he’s going now. She’s practically carrying him.

The light is coming from one of the shuttles. It’s hovering a few feet above the ground, which seems a lot more scorched than it did the last time he saw it. At the corners of his vision, he can see flames licking at the sky. There’s a mad, cackling burst of laughter from his left, and Rocket yells, “E _at plasma, freaks!_ ”

“You’re not dying,” Gamora tells him, her breath hot on the side of his face, and then he’s being shoved, none too gently, over the threshold of the shuttle portal. “Stay there. I’ll be right back. And  _don’t go to sleep,_ or I’ll shoot you myself.”

“Your bedside manners suck,” Peter mumbles, but he’s smiling a little. He lets his head fall back against the cool metal as she wades back into the fight.

 

 


End file.
